Elevate Your Business Game: 7 Positive Lessons from the Olympics.

Spending time at the Olympics in Paris 2024 has allowed me to reflect on what has gone extraordinarily well and what could have been improved. While it is easy to play Monday morning quarterback and question how things were done, a fantastic number of positives have come from the Paris Olympics 2024.

What was particularly interesting is that many of them are business lessons we could all take to heart.

1. Start Planning Early.

A key to success continues to be to start planning early. This allows time for thoughtful consideration and the development of various plans (Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, etc.) to provide for a solid outcome. While we hope we never have to go to Plan B or Plan C, when we have to convert in a moment, it’s nice to know those plans already exist and have been well thought out and orchestrated.

While some events, like the Olympics, require hundreds of hours of planning, all too often, business owners just need to spend 20 or 30 minutes and get started on the plan early. Too frequently, we think we’ll need huge blocks of time, so we procrastinate, and that gets us in trouble later.

2. Be Flexible and Pivot when Necessary

The first seven days of the Olympics ranged from pouring rain to temperatures near 100°. Several events continued in the sweltering heat, while others had to be postponed due to weather. The onslaught of rain resulted in further uncertainty if the triathletes could swim in the Seine, and in fact, a decision was not even made until 4:00 AM the day of.

Business owners should equally embrace flexibility and be ready to pivot when necessary.

3. Start Marketing Before You have everything figured out.

Well before July 2024, NBC, the City of Paris, and the Olympic Committees started marketing the Olympics to set the seed and create the desire to get people to come. This was vital to the later purchasing of tickets, lodging arrangements, and transportation. Even before tickets went on sale, people were already making reservations and setting themselves up for attendance.
Perhaps because I’m a frequent traveler to Paris, I was inundated early with opportunities to buy expensive tickets and VIP experiences even before I knew which athletes would be coming to the Olympics.

The allure to me was being part of something that was the first of its kind. I didn’t need to know all the details to understand the FOMO (fear of missing out) and to decide to be in Paris in July when the temperature often ranges into the mid-90s.

4. Use Every Opportunity to Place Your Brand.

All too often, business owners fail to take advantage of opportunities that are right in front of them. A simple one is signage or reaffirming that people are in the right place by placing your brand and logo in a variety of areas so people are constantly reminded of the brand.
From the minute we landed and walked through Charles de Gaulle Airport to the thousands of banners and signs everywhere, it is hard to walk anywhere without seeing the Paris 2024 Olympics logos.

Business owners can take a page from this book and brand every e-mail handout, brochure, and document a client might touch. Also, for those who come to a physical location, it’s a great opportunity to have the brand and logo identified from the street once the person walks into the building, into the office, and into the conference room. There are so many opportunities to reaffirm who you are and the brand that you stand for.

5. REPURPOSE EVERYTHING!

I’ve been very impressed with how often I’ve seen materials broken down and moved to other areas to be reused by another event or the next day rather than trashed, with new materials being used fresh. Investing a few extra pennies to have a solid product that can be used multiple times is not only good for the environment but also good for the checkbook and profitability.

Business owners should regularly review their chart of accounts and expenses to identify opportunities to make purchases that can be repurposed in multiple ways.

The 2024 Olympics is also having a lot of fun repurposing images from the 1924 Olympics with cute videos and comical talking heads to illustrate the change that has happened in the last 100 years. By repurposing so much content over the years, they did not need to create new expensive videos or advertising. Business owners should again regularly review their marketing to see what can be repurposed.

6. Create the Structure You want and get people to comply.

Good business owners know the key to success is to orchestrate a client experience and to assist in setting expectations so clients participate in the way we want them to participate. The Paris Olympics have been no different. They forced the world to utilize digital tickets with interactivity between real-time transport information, QR codes that stayed available even when cell phones were dead, and an interactive app that allowed you to pull real-time information quickly.
While many were concerned in advance, I witnessed 80,000+ people enter the Stade de France using these digital tickets, and the process was very smooth.

Like many new things, it requires education and the presentation of information in a variety of formats so that people can absorb and utilize the information they need.

7. Be Theatrical at Times and Have fun.

The opening ceremonies were a great example of this. As the cameras followed the boats up the Seine, the different areas highlighted French culture, history, and the vibrancy of the people. While some didn’t appreciate the entertaining theatrics, there is no denying the dancers were having fun sharing their perspectives.

People love to do business with people who are enjoying life. Adding a bit of theatrics to some of the marketing and having fun with what you do can often be the slice of authentic marketing that creates a community of raving fans around your business.

There were undoubtedly both lovers and haters of the opening ceremonies, but for those who watched them, what they all held in common was that they were memorable.

Salute from Paris!